Pros:-Politics:This game has an extremely good politics system in place where you can make decisions that effect not only individuals but entire races as a whole. This phase is easily the best part of the game, it is well voice acted, well animated, and provides great enjoyment for most.

Cons:-Map phase:The map phase is shallow to say the least, here you can play cards that improve empire related things, or build buildings that will allow you to improve income and recruit units or mercenaries. But that is all, there is nothing more here, no diplomacy, no trading, nothing that would make you want to spend time strategizing here.

-Combat:This should be the most interesting part of the game, since this is the part where you get to be the dragon...for about 2-5 mins. Here are the problems with this phase:First the design choices, as in the way the units look, they are not only quite small(can't zoom in enough), but also look the same for all factions.

Second, the speed of the combat is waaaaay too fast, if you want to play defensively, you are screwed, you want to build up bases, you are screwed. The only way to win is if you blob all over the enemy at the start of the battle in which case the battle ends rather quickly because if your draw it out, the enemy becomes too strong and usually you can no longer overwhelm them before you run out of resources, enjoy your 5 mins long battle without strategies and being the dragon for about 5 mins. This problem however also relates to being the dragon.

Third, the dragon is strong at the beginning, but if you try and draw out the match to enjoy some base building, you will quickly find, that your dragon is becoming more and more useless as time passes on, since the enemy is improving their units all the time, they will take more hits and you will take less, in the end you will die extremely quickly, making becoming the dragon rather useless.

Fourth, the units have way too many skills you can't micromanage on the same level as the ai, which can make some fights rather one sided.

Fifth, and this is the largest problem with the combat by far. Mercenary cards. Why in the world would you even want to enter combat with such bad mechanics behind it when you can simply bypass it by spamming inns and mercenary cards and than using auto-combat?

-The length of the skirmish matches:These only take anywhere from 25(min difficulty)-45(max difficulty) mins. I tested this by using only mercenary cards and lol i won all of my matches against highest difficulty ai in 45 mins max. This is a joke. Mercenary cards shouldn't be in the game or should be better balanced.

-Story:What story? You mean the few cutscenes we get?The campaign can be completed in about 2-3 hours, which is extremely short for a game like this. The enemies are quite generic, have no personality, don't taunt you and pretty much act the same on the battlefield, or at least i haven't noticed that they did anything differently from eachother.

To sum it up, the devs created a great politics mechanic in the game, unfortunately the game fails at the other parts, and for the title dragon commander, i was expecting to see more dragons or at least more often than about 2-5 mins in combat. I have the feeling that if they went with the original concept, instead of remaking the whole game halfway through in a single year, they could've achieved more, alas, it is not so.

Do i recommend this game for the current price(40eur)? NOThis game is not worth 40 eur.But i do recommend you pick it up when it is on offer.The game is worth about 15-20 eur, carried by the politics and the multiplayer may give you a few hours of amusement.

I recommend this only with a big caveat: you'll like this game if you're willing to appreciate what it could have been, rather than what it really is. I found myself enjoying the game's core concepts enough that I could overlook a lot of the poor execution, but not everyone will have the same experience.

First off, the bad. The RTS gameplay, which forms the bulk of the game's combat systems, is a mind-numbing clickfest of swarming units around. Everything you own dies almost instantly, to the point where it feels pointless to try to micromanage your units, or even use them wisely - it becomes about trying to get the largest horde and throw it at your enemy's weakest points. Playing across the Risk-like metamap can be a tedious slog if you're waiting around to build units, and auto-resolve usually loses you far more units than necessary. I gambled with a direct strike across the entire map to my enemy's capital in the final stage because I couldn't stand the thought of grinding away at his territory for another several dozen turns; under-prepared and outnumbered, I had to fight that last battle about 10 times before winning, but it still felt worth it to not have to play the metamap anymore.

On the other hand, being able to transform into a dragon in the RTS battles is fun, especially since, after some practice, it becomes possible to win battles that are almost entirely in the enemy's favour by judicious dragon use (I easily won battles that the game's auto-resolve system gave me a 90%+ chance of losing). This ultimately ends up defeating the purpose of the RTS gameplay, though it's still pretty fun to play around with. One thing that annoyed me was the realization that the only reason the dragon is not totally invincible is because enemy projectiles will home in on you, forever, from across the entire map, which feels like a cheesy design solution.

The story, politics, and RPG elements that occur between battles on the command ship are where the game really shines. The characters are surprisingly well voiced, the art style is excellent, and the storyline and dilemmas are quite compelling, both on their own as well as in terms of their impact on the game. It's sad to see how an excellent RPG/strategy hybrid is hiding in there, barred from becoming as good as it could be by mediocre RTS design. Another six months of polish and design work could have made a world of difference.

This game tries to do too much, but that gives it a certain amount of charm. The RTS is pretty simple, and bum rushing is basically the only strategy you need. Being able to turn into a dragon adds the needed fun action you need to keep it interesting. The Risk-like stragey board is servicible. The star atraction here is interacting with the characters on your ship. Reminiscent of the adventure game ship stuff from Starcraft 2, except here Dragon Commander actually comes out on top. The choices you have have little impact on gameplay, but just getting the reactions from the characters is worth it. The writing and voice acting is all pretty good. I wish there was a little more to the campaign mode, but the weird variability with the wives provides some replayability. I reccomend this game if you're looking for some adventuregamey character stuff and aren't too bothered by shallow RTS gameplay.

Of all the games that I have played, the game that probably did the best at challenging my ethics was Divinity: Dragon Commander. Admittedly, the gameplay is lackluster in both the strategy and combat phases; it was not long before I habitually skipped tactical battle for auto-resolution. But where Divinity: Dragon Commander really shines is in the diplomacy phase – the phase of each turn where you take a step back from world conquest to deal with management of your empire through the enacting of laws and policies. Your empire has racial factions, each with their own dominant political, social and religious sensibilities. Sure, their representatives are largely caricatures of modern political stances, but they still manage to bring arguments to the table that push you to evaluate your choices.

Every decision will have consequences – in the very least, they will alter how favorably each faction views you, and can have other (sometimes quite unexpected) impacts as well. Displease the dwarves too often, and you might find your royal coffers running on empty. Make the imps happy enough, and they’ll offer up the opportunity to gain a fantastic and horrible new bomb… if only you’ll allow them to mine in the one place where the mystical material they need can be found (despite, you know, the whole “sacred elven burial site” nonsense). Divinity: Dragon Commander was surprisingly good at making me examine if and when I would embrace practicality or expediency over my personal sense of right and wrong.

The diplomacy phase also includes dealing with your military generals, each of which bring their own personalities, problems and histories to the war room. In addition, you will enjoy a diplomatic marriage that will bolster your approval rating, at least initially, with one of the races; but your wife adds an entirely new substory to navigate through, with multiple possible outcomes.

The diplomacy phase of this game is rich enough to not only play the game for, but to replay it until you have exhausted all the diplomatic possibilities. And since maintaining high enough favor with a faction will open up surprising new avenues, there is a lot of possibilites to explore and enjoy.

Let me start with saying the game is fun, the game is very fun and I thoroughly enjoyed it and continue to enjoy it from time to time.

Now, let me say as an avid fan of real time strategy the actual strategy part is nothin special, some would say abhorrant and I would almost agree with them. It IS a strategy game but an incredibly simple one, and not in a good way. There isn't much to it other than spam units and zerg rush capture points, which does involve strategy but in the same way a sandwich involves bread. Very simple, little depth, and not a huge amount of strategy.

Alot of people don't care about the units they command, some people only play certain factions for the bonuses or the way they fight and so on. I, personally can't really enjoy a game unless I like the aethetics, so units in an RTS are a HUGE part for me and I probably just won't ever consider playing an entire faction just because I hate the way the units look. That said, I don't like the units in the game. I understand what they were going for, but it's weird and kind of dumb. Had what your entire army is assembled of been special units, I might be alright with it, but ALL OF YOUR UNITS ARE WALKERS. Every single one, and it's BORING. Really really really boring. The blimps and airships are fine, but ALL of the land units are so unbelievably dull and boring.

Map design in this game is quite fun. Had this game been a bit strategic, it would be a classic. Bottlenecks, choke points, high ground, the works. While fights are typically decided by face smashing zergs together, over all battles are decided by who manipulates the map.

Speaking of maps, there's a campaign map. And, yes I do like campaign maps. There's not a vast collection of campaign maps to choose from, but it's forgiveable. The Campaign map in Dragon Commader is actually quite good. It's design and style is fun and makes you feel like an emporer moving his pawns about the field. It's got some depth that doesn't leave much to be desired.

Wassat? You said Dragons? You sayYou say you Dragons? Yes, you can be a Dragon. You wanna be a Dragon? Cause you can be a dragon.Wassat? You wanna know if it's fun?You're a Dragon.You fly around at hyperspeed and blow ♥♥♥♥ up with fire and acid.What do you want me to say? You're a dragon. Yes, it is fun.

This is all fun, but there's more. There's an almost Elder Scrolls, rpg social aspect to this game. There's a whole thing with you getting a princess and all kinds of ♥♥♥♥ and ♥♥♥♥ you I married the Dwarf you're jealous. That's what we call a run-on sentence. One of the things that's very enjoyable is the ability to make decisions within your Empire. This means that, on top of conquering other empires, you get to feel more like it's your empire slowly devouring the world. And these decisions make small, but sometimes noticeable changes to your empire. Yes, I allowed public nudity and for Elves to be industrially cremated for the purpose of Imp nukes to be mass produced.

Should you buy it?Can you tell me another game that allows you to create a Elvish Holocaust for the sole purpose of producing Imp warheads to level entire cities while you, a dragon with a giant jetpack, swoops overhead melting everything with acid and brimstone?

While i haven't experienced online multiplayer, i can say that the singleplayer storyline is worth it on its own; the RTS elements may be considered weak as there is only one "faction" as such when it comes to units; and most of the units fall into basic and uninteresting roles; this is but one part of a much larger and more intracate strategy game.

May be not a blockbuster, but a solid 7/10 game. There is some story (good looking, but not engaging enought to replay with different outcomes), some strategy (5/10 sadly) and (surprise!) some dragon flying (selling point here). Some parts could have been better, but a decent way to pass a weekend.

Very very minor spoiler here: I sent two NPCs on a mission and they don't like each other. Upon their successful return, one said of the other "There must be some brain cells left 'neath that simian cranium of his afterall - holding on for dear life I expect."

There are a great deal of very unique and well differentiated characters and personalities here. There are a lot of cliches like 'greedy dwarf' or 'nature loving elf' but the execution makes this game stand out.

I recommend this only to the extent that you pay no more than $15 for it. This game has high production values and is very polished, but it is a very very short game. There just isn't enough content. I beat the single player campaign in 12 hours on my first try on normal. There are a couple game mechanics quirks that you can exploit to make the game a breeze once you learn them.

There seems to be a push to have you play multiplayer but this isn't a popular enough game to really find others to play with. The RTS controls are mostly primitive, and dragon form doesn't really last long enough (and isn't really effective enough) compared with RTS controls to really be a big part.

That said, I still give it a thumbs up because the dialogue is witty, the voice acting is well done, the world is refreshing, and there are innovations here that I enjoy. It just all ended too soon. I have a general rule - each dollar of a game should last me at least 1 hour, so a $40 game should give me at least 40 hrs of enjoyment to be worth the price. This game is therefore a "thumbs up" at about $10-15, but not a good value after that. I will try the custom maps and maybe change my review, but given that the best part of this game is not empire management and combat, but the characters and politics engine, it really is a better fit as a single player, story-driven game.

8/10Great game if you wanna make your own decisions, you don't get the feeling that the decisions you are making its pointless, since you gain or lose something doing the coming rounds.Great graphings this game just cool look [which is one of the major reasons why i bought this game ]a lot of maps and a lot of ways to fight them, you can fight battle with your generals, dragon form or your commander form.This game is very short, i went and conquered all the land before moving on and yet it took me about 18 hours to finish it, i played once again with another wife/queen and that is the only reason i would play this game more then once.what i mean is once you finish it once, there is nothing to do but change wife/queen, and of course change your decisions. [ 75% of the time i ended up picking the same ]

Divinity: Dragon Commander is mostly about politics. If you're looking for a good RTS game then stay away. Get something like Company of Heroes or Age of Empires instead.

The campaign in the game is quite short. It took me 8 hours to finish my first playthrough on normal. The game does, however, have a lot of replay value. This is thanx to the politics system: It mostly adresses a lot of nowadays matters and you can choose what laws to pass and what to disgard. For an example: Legalise gay marriage, weed, let women vote etc etc. There are also 4 different prides you can choose to marry and demon offers you can choose...i know i'm gonna experiment with different choices in my 2nd and 3rd playthrough. I want to see how they all play out and what is the best way to get lots of approval from all races.You can be downright sexist, evil or whatever.

The game has an excellent voice acting and this makes meddling with politics such a bliss. Each character is perfectly voice acted and this was the first thing that caught my attention in the game.

The only con with this game is that the battles suck. They are mostly 5-10 minutes long and there's no strategy involved. You quickly realise that in order to win battles you just have to charge at the enemy base immediatly. If you try to build bases, gather armies then you'll just lose because the enemy gets stronger with every second and will eventually become unbeatable.Being a dragon won't help either. Your dragon will be overpowered in the first 2 minutes but gets super weak after that. You will only stay alive for a minute and then wait for respawn. That is why you have to charge at the enemies immediatly... - The strategy in the RTS battles is none existant and is a big dissapointment.That is why i auto resolved most of my matches.

This is a game for people who like to make decisions and meddle with politics, not for the fans of RTS battles.

If you're like me and want to see all different outcomes of the decisions you can make then the game is surely worth it's full price. If you, however, will only play through it once then you'll be highly dissapointed in the 6-9h campaign and should wait for at least a 50% discount.

This is a good game. The RTS is fun, and gathring recruits (resources) to build units is handled well. The units themselves are quite nice. The turn-based part is cute, as all of the people working for you have things to say. There are Generals, Politicians, an Engineer, a gnarly old Wizard and eventually a Princess to marry. You get to make decisions that have far reaching repercussions.

The graphics are nice and the music is also pretty good. The music changes from turn to turn. The story itself is neat. Most RTS just put you on a map and say 'go conquer'. In Dragon Commander the story is half the fun!

I played on casual my first time through and it was a ton of fun. Flying the Dragon is neat. Pretty good game.

This game does a lot of things that I like, but falls a bit short for me, since I'm not a huge RTS buff.

Macro level (world map, outside each RTS encounter) movement/production is rather superficial. This is fine if you're mostly interested in the RTS, but less cool if you tend to prefer strategic depth like me.